Where the Internet Lives: Google gives us a look inside their data centers

Google did yesterday something they have never done before. They allowed the general public to see what it is like inside one of their data centers. This means that they got a look at well over 50 thousand servers that power the services we use every day. The sheer magnitude of these data centers is really breathtaking and almost seems unreal.

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These data centers are using about 35% renewable energy. Google’s commitment to increase the proportion of renewable energy is getting a lot of praise because, as you can imagine, these centers use an obscene amount of energy. However, this energy is required to handle the 20 billion web pages indexed per day, the 3 billion daily searches, and the 425 million Gmail users.

To kick this tour off permanently, Google has launched a new website called Where the Internet Lives. The site will show you impressive images from all of Google’s 12 data centers and let you meet the employees that run them. In fact, using Google’s Street View, you can actually get a virtual tour of Google’s Lenor, NC data center:

This move is an attempt from Google to seem more open, which is great, considering the recent privacy publicity they have been getting.

If you want an even more thorough look inside Google’s cloud factories, the search giant has granted a CBS crew the rare privilege of reporting from its North Carolina data center. Check out the report below, complete with a few quips from Google’s infrastructure czar, Urs Hölzle.